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Topic: Cheapskate stories (Read 366054 times)

My ex was a definite cheapskate. We never went out for dinner unless it was a 2-4-1 coupon - even on my birthday. This isn't cheapskate, but downright theft, but he would get up very early in the morning and walk around our neighbourhood and take bread out of the bags left for the local restaurants. I never got a gift that wasn't from a garage sale, etc.

However, there was one time that I still shudder to remember.

I worked in a very nice small office. I was working away when the VP came into the office and said, "There's a well dressed guy in a suit in the men's room and he putting rolls of toilet paper into his briefcase."

Shortly after, there is a knock at the door and I go to buzz them in.

Yup - sure enough - there's my boyfriend!

(not sure what you mean - did people leave bags of bread for the restaurants - or residents?")

Either way, yes, it's theft.

I remember catching a neighbor who stole my newspapers way back in the day when I lived in an apartment bldg where you had to walk down a long hallway. I suspected it was the guy living across me. (A friend said I should have put out an old newspaper with a nasty note inside) but I decided to try to catch him in the act. I got up really early and just waited at the door, looking out the peephole. Sure enough, at about 5:45am I heard the carrier toss my Sunday paper on the floor in the hall. Then I saw the guy across the hall very quietly come out, look to the left and right, and bend down. I yanked my door open, grabbed my paper, and he turned all shades of red. Just like your ex, OP, he was a cheapskate AND also a thief.

I used to work in the operating rooms as a nurse. We weren't terribly well paid then, and there was often limited capacity to leave the OR block for meals, so most of us brought in something from home and put it in the communal fridge.

Frequently you'd come into the break room and find doctors, who were only there usually for a four hour session and all of them on much bigger salaries than the nurses, rummaging through our lunches for something to eat. Even though there were usually some forms of food (bread, cheese, tomatoes, cold meat, biscuits and sandwiches) provided for them.

Often on late shifts we'd bring in something to share - nice bakery bread, cake or slices. One night I brought in a large sweet iced bun, but I got stuck in a case until fairly late in the shift. Starving, I though 'Oh well, at least there'll be some bun!' No, not really. Some doc found it and scarfed the lot.

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Out on the patio we'd sit,And the humidity we'd breathe,We'd watch the lightning crack over canefieldsLaugh and think, this is Australia.

I used to work in the operating rooms as a nurse. We weren't terribly well paid then, and there was often limited capacity to leave the OR block for meals, so most of us brought in something from home and put it in the communal fridge.

Frequently you'd come into the break room and find doctors, who were only there usually for a four hour session and all of them on much bigger salaries than the nurses, rummaging through our lunches for something to eat. Even though there were usually some forms of food (bread, cheese, tomatoes, cold meat, biscuits and sandwiches) provided for them.

Often on late shifts we'd bring in something to share - nice bakery bread, cake or slices. One night I brought in a large sweet iced bun, but I got stuck in a case until fairly late in the shift. Starving, I though 'Oh well, at least there'll be some bun!' No, not really. Some doc found it and scarfed the lot.

That's so bad! My sister is doing her residency right now and the attendings on her floor have a habit of buying dinner for their underlings who are on call. They make a point of mentioning that their own superiors had done the same for them when they were still newbies and paying off their loans, and that the residents should pass on the favor when they are on top someday.

My cousin is a NICU nurse at a hospital. The staff bring in their lunches, and they had to install double padlocks on the refrigerator and freezer, otherwise the visitors to the patients on their floor (newborns and their mothers) would steal their lunches!

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ďAll that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."-J.R.R Tolkien

The idea of putting an old (decoy) newspaper outside my door early in the morning was tempting, but I never did it. But it used to make me mad that I had to get dressed, go out and buy another Sunday paper to replace the one he had stolen. It happened about 6 times before I caught and stopped him.

Sis told there is a group of families that when ever one of them comes into her hospital to give birth - the staff has to go on high alert. The families are like locus. They strip the place bare. If the person delivering meals leaves the cart to go in and you know deliver a meal - the family will swarm and take every meal off the cart. They steal from staff and family. When they notice extra security on the floor - they scream discrimination.

I'll admit that DH and I've done this a couple or three times. We'd returned to his apartment (when he was still living there) to find a pine computer table, a white cabinet and a white shelf unit next to the dumpsters (all at different times). They looked perfectly fine so I asked him to get them. I figured that since these were small apartments (studio and one-bedroom), people probably moved and didn't want to take these things with them (seriously, they were perfectly fine; not even dirty -- if there'd been something wrong with them, they would've gone back to the trash).

I suppose you could call us cheap as almost all of our furniture we got for free through hand-me-downs from friends and family or via Freecycle, but we're happy with them (we got a great china cabinet through Craigslist for only $50; the seller surmised it was worth around $800 as it is mostly -- except the back -- solid wood).

Friend, finding the surplus hot water, insisted in putting it into a thermos flask to keep it hot until a future occasion when hot water would be wanted.

I could see myself doing this, too, but it's more the guilt of not conserving water, rather than just trying to save money (everyone pays the same rate in our area -- no meters -- so it wouldn't save us any money). I don't actually do it though. I feel guilty about wasting water these days, but I don't do anything to conserve it (I just dump it, like if it's in a measuring cup or spoon and I didn't need that much).

I explained the source and he said. "The other day his boss held a senior management meeting at which he announced that the company was no longer going to waste money on paper clips. The meeting went on for an hour and a half in which he explained what documents were to be stapled instead of held together with paper clips. Harvey wants to be able to identify his paper clips so he can get them back, so can we get him a box that are all one color, like blue?"

I told him I'd ask our office manager, but also speculated on how this man could justify wasting 90 minutes of his highest-paid employees' time over an annual office expenditure that didn't equal the hourly wage of any of them. My boss knew this didn't make any sense, but we didn't want to lose the account.

Our next CEO resigned the account three years later over a difference of opinion regarding how the client was handling a product's second year in the market. That client is no longer in business.

Off-topic, but, upthread, I posted about a manager who had his daughter call our office from their house so she could be transferred to the manager's new location with the toll charges being charged to the company.

My first day of employment there, I was told to always staple documents with the staple at a 45-degree angle to the corner because Manager didn't like it when the staple was parallel to the edge of the paper (when he'd flip the page, the flipped page would tear off the staple). After a few months, Manager asked me to show him how I attached paperclips to documents. I showed him, and he directed me to clip the paperclips so the small part was always in front because when he flipped the pages I clipped with the large part in front, the pages would flip off.

He was an otherwise great guy to work for, but you gotta wonder that if that much attention was being paid to such tiny things, he must've developed one heck of an ulcer as he would've been stressed out all the time (and he was super super-cheap also).

When I first started work in the library, one of the first 'tests' I encountered was how I stapled a document. I've always done the 45 degree angle because it causes the least damage to the paper. I passed that test.

The proper orientation of a paper clip is something a little different. That can get odd. I always liked to put the clip on at a 45 degree angle with the large part of the clip in front. If a document is small enough to be secured with a paper clip, it's small enough to be read and reconstructed without a major problem.

The proper orientation of a paper clip is something a little different. That can get odd. I always liked to put the clip on at a 45 degree angle with the large part of the clip in front. If a document is small enough to be secured with a paper clip, it's small enough to be read and reconstructed without a major problem.

For those whose bosses check those sorts of details, I recommend buying a packet of these and see if they still want to comment: doggy-themed paperclips

I know two people that this happened to: The host at the bar-b-que bought steaks for himself and hot dogs for everyone else.

When my daughters were staying with DH's parents for a week, MIL and FIL ate lobster two nights, and gave the girls hot dogs. Lobsters that they were GIVEN, 4 of them. So it wasn't a case of "I don't want to buy lobster for kids that might not eat them." And my girls were 9 and 12, old enough to be adventurous about eating all kinds of things, not just PBJ and cold cereal.

Unless I knew the girls liked lobster for sure before cooking them, I would have made something different for a 9 and 12 year old, too. Even if they were an adventurous eater. And even if the lobsters were given to me.

I know two people that this happened to: The host at the bar-b-que bought steaks for himself and hot dogs for everyone else.

When my daughters were staying with DH's parents for a week, MIL and FIL ate lobster two nights, and gave the girls hot dogs. Lobsters that they were GIVEN, 4 of them. So it wasn't a case of "I don't want to buy lobster for kids that might not eat them." And my girls were 9 and 12, old enough to be adventurous about eating all kinds of things, not just PBJ and cold cereal.

Unless I knew the girls liked lobster for sure before cooking them, I would have made something different for a 9 and 12 year old, too. Even if they were an adventurous eater. And even if the lobsters were given to me.

In my family, it would be expected that children that old would be eating the lobster - but my sister was downing oysters on the half shell with horseradish (requested by her with a lisp) in the sauce at age 3. In my family though shell fish aren't a rare treat. With my PEI family they are more of a staple coming directly off the boats of family and friends.